Smooth operator: Cary Grant fan Lee Randall on the 20th century icon

Published on Wednesday 17 February 2010 20:00

As the Glasgow Film Festival celebrates the work of Cary Grant, devoted fan Lee Randall fills us in on one of the 20th century's greatest actors

• Cary Grant

TALL, dark and handsome – the phrase was practically invented for Cary Grant. Born Archie Leach in Bristol on 18 January, 1904, he remains one of our most beloved film stars. Precious few would disagree with Audrey Hepburn when, in Charade, she poses the rhetorical question: "Do you know what's wrong with you? Nothing!"

Grant is the star of the Glasgow Film Festival's 2010 retrospective. But how much do you really know about the practically perfect leading man who enlivened more Hollywood classics than any other actor of his generation? Test your knowledge here.

• He made 28 less than stellar movies before his career "clicked" with The Awful Truth. Starring opposite Irene Dunne as an almost divorced husband still madly in love with his wife, Grant helped invent the popular genre known as screwball comedy. By then he was well into his thirties and worried that he'd never make a success of his film career.

• Yet he nearly dropped out of The Awful Truth because he, along with the rest of the cast, felt baffled by what it was director Leo McCarey had in mind, or whether the script made any sense. Grant allegedly said, "Let me out of this and I'll do another picture for nothing." He sent a long memo to studio head Harry Cohn and offered to pay to be released from his contract. Film fans today sing hosannas that McCarey prevailed…

• In A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese's character is called Archibald Leach, and Grant himself made sly references to his "alter ego" several times on film, most notably in His Girl Friday, when he said: "The last man to say that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat."

• Grant was a staunch Republican, who introduced Betty Ford to the Republican National Convention in 1976. He counted Ronald and Nancy Reagan as friends.

• According to Peter Bogdanovich, a close friend, the most invaluable bit of directing advice Josef von Sternberg gave Grant during the filming of Blonde Venus was this: "The first day I came on set he looked at me and said, 'Your hair is parted on the wrong side.' (So] I parted it on the other side and kept it that way the rest of my career."

• Critic David Thomson reveres Cary Grant, and rates him "the most important actor the movies have ever had". He reckons Grant is the most underrated actor, too.

• After an unhappy experience under contract to Paramount, Grant was one of the first stars to buck the studio system, and remained a freelancer for the rest of his career, which ended when he officially retired in 1966, aged 62.

• As a retiree, Grant became a first-time dad, and sat on the boards of companies including MGM and Faberg.

• Of course, Grant had retired about a decade earlier, but was lured back before the cameras by Alfred Hitchcock (who called him "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life"), to film To Catch a Thief, opposite Grace Kelly, in 1955. Buoyed by that film's success, he carried on working for another 11 years.

• Although he was nominated twice, Cary Grant never won an Oscar. He did, however, accept the Best Actress gong on behalf of Ingrid Bergman in 1957, because she couldn't be there, and was later chosen to give a lifetime achievement award to Sir Laurence Olivier. In 1985 he made his final appearance at the Academy Awards, presenting a lifetime achievement award to Jimmy Stewart.

• He died in Davenport, Iowa, having suffered a major stroke prior to taking the stage in his one-man show, An Evening With Cary Grant. His ashes were scattered over the Pacific. In accordance to his wishes, there was no funeral and no memorial service.

• Grant donated his fee for The Philadelphia Story (1940) to the British war effort, and his fee for Arsenic and Old Lace, made four years later, to the US War Relief Fund.

• Many people know that he participated in an experimental psychology programme that used LSD (he took more than 100 trips), but did you know that he dropped acid alongside Aldous Huxley?

• He so disliked Method Acting that he once suggested casting Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and "that god-awful James Dean" in a picture in order to "let them duke it out".

• He insisted: "I improve on misquotation."

• Though he did actually say: "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. I want to be Cary Grant."

• In 1999 the American Film Institute placed him second, after Humphrey Bogart, in a list of leading actors.

• Four months before his death, Grant told interviewer Kent Schuelke, "The best actress I ever worked with was Grace Kelly. Ingrid (Bergman], Audrey (Hepburn] and Deborah Kerr were splendid, splendid actresses, but Grace was utterly relaxed – the most extraordinary actress ever. Her mind was razor-keen, but she was relaxed while she was doing it."

• Grant also had a soft spot for the other Hepburn – Katharine – and said, "I worked with her about five times. One doesn't do a thing more than once – unless you're an idiot – that one doesn't like."

• President Kennedy once rang him from the White House just to hear the sound of his voice.

• A massive fan of Elvis Presley, Grant is visible in the audience and backstage in the documentary That's the Way It Is.

• Grant became an American citizen in 1942.

• He was so renowned for his personal flair that there was even a book published on the subject, with the title Cary Grant, A Celebration of Style. It was written by Richard Torregrossa, who had the innovative idea of quizzing Grant's tailor. Rumour has it that George Clooney was so taken with the tome that he distributed copies on the set of Ocean's 13.

• Writing in Granta, novelist Todd McEwen said: "North by Northwest isn't a film about what happens to Cary Grant, it's about what happens to his suit. The suit has the adventures; a gorgeous New York suit threading its way through America."

• Critic Pauline Kael once said that Grant "always looks as if he'd just come from a workout in a miracle gym".

• Late in life the actor became close friends with Quincy Jones.

• He was originally cast in the role of Rupert Cadell in Hitchcock's Rope, but Jimmy Stewart stepped in when he became unavailable. Later, he'd "replace" Stewart in North by Northwest, when a superstitious Hitchcock, convinced that Stewart was to blame for the lacklustre box office of Vertigo, gave Grant the role of Roger Thornhill. Though Hitchcock felt Grant looked younger and was therefore more bankable, he was actually a few years older than Stewart.

• Thinking he was far too old to be a believable love interest for Audrey Hepburn in Charade, he agreed to take the part only after the screenplay was rewritten to make it clear that she was chasing him, not vice versa.

• He said he owed elements of his persona to Nol Coward, whose performance in Private Lives so inspired him, that "many a musical comedy road company was afflicted with my breezy new gestures and puzzling accent. Still, everyone has to start somewhere and, in a way, everything starts with pretence. One pretends to do something … until it can be done confidently and easily in what becomes one's own manner. I doubt if Nol was flattered by my mimicry, but we've remained friends over the years."

• When Grant quailed at the thought of approaching Betsy Drake (who became his third wife) on the deck of the Queen Mary, he enlisted Merle Oberon to step in and invite her to join them for lunch.

• While he was window shopping in London, Grant spotted an antique wooden cabinet that exactly matched the description of one Ingrid Bergman coveted for her home in the French countryside. He rang her to ascertain that she hadn't already bought one and told her to expect a big surprise – only to find out that the surprise was on him: while he was off making the lengthy international call, the shop's proprietor sold the blasted thing to someone else.

• He remained friends with Princess Grace and Prince Rainier throughout his life, visiting them in both Monaco and Paris.

• Long before David Beckham, Grant was notorious for wearing ladies' nylon pants, claiming them to be the last word in comfort.

• The Glasgow Film Festival runs from today until 28 February. For more information on the festival's Cary Grant retrospective, and a full list of films, visit www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk